An Investigation of the Relationship between Social Loafing and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

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1 Available online at ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Scien ce s 99 ( 2013 ) th International Strategic Management Conference An Investigation of the Relationship between Social Loafing and Organizational Citizenship Behavior Himmet Karadal a b, a* a Aksaray University, Turkey b Aksaray University, Turkey Abstract The main aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between social loafing and organizational citizenship behavior. To examine this relationship, the data were collected by the questionnaire forms from school principals and bank managers & employees in Aksaray, Turkey. Organizational citizenship behavior affects the efficiency of employees and increases the possibility of collaboration. If organizations want to increase their efficiency and profitability, they should lead the citizenship behavior among their employees. Otherwise, they would run out of rivalry and success. On the other hand, the term social loafing has a negative reflection in organizations. It lets the employees work individually and expend less effort for their works. In this study counteract tendency that is social loafing have been analyzed in the light of a deep data analysis carried out via statistical assessments. 3 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the 9 th 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. International Selection and peer-review Strategic Management under responsibility Conference of the International Strategic Management Conference. Keywords: Social Loafing Tendency, Organizational Citizenship Behavior, Management 1. Introduction In this competitive environment, organizations need to have efficiently working employees. Also, these employees should go beyond their traditional job descriptions or formal duties. In order to increase efficiency, organizations should lead the citizenship process. The reason for this attitude can be that employees exhibit higher levels of performance and act more than their job descriptions when they believe they are treated fairly at their workplaces. In other words, employee's job performance may increase or decrease in relation to perceptions of inequitable outcomes (Noruzy et al, 2011). Social loafing tendency means that any individual tend to expend less effort when working collectively rather than working individually (Karau and Williams, 1993). The reason of this situation is that except Corresponding author. Tel address: hkaradal@gmail.com The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the International Strategic Management Conference. doi: /j.sbspro

2 Himmet Karadal and Muhammet Saygın / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 ( 2013 ) from the daily ones, organizations sometimes need to perform special tasks which require more effort and attention of the work groups rather than individuals. It is also obvious that different skills and visions, brought up together through the work groups, occur as a great synergy for organizations although there can be the negative effects of these types of group work. These indicated situations can be said to be some consequences of soci The study deals with the social loafing tendency and organizational citizenship behavior. Both the school principles and managers of the private sector have been included to the research. When related scientific field is analyzed, it can easily be seen that there are limited studies dealing with social loafing and organizational citizenship especially in regional point of view. In this study, first of all a brief of social loafing and organizational citizenship behavior information is presented. Then, data which are about the relationships between social loafing and organizational citizenship behavior are analyzed. Finally, recommendations and results are given in terms of the analysis of the study. The analysis of collected data is carried out through SPSS 20 package program by using the statistical assessment techniques. 2. Literature Review And Hypotheses 2.1. Organizational Citizenship Behavior According to Organ (1988), organizationa individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of t zenship means having a related impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of organization. So, it contributes to the overall productivity and competitiveness of the organization (Sharma et al, 2011). When we look at the literature about the organizational citizenship behavior, it can easily be seen that there are widely used five-dimensional classification including altruism, civic virtue, conscientiousness, courtesy and sportsmanship. Altruism is a voluntary behavior including the cooperation of workers in relation to their tasks or problems. Conscientiousness deals with certain role behaviors which are exhibited by employees at a level that exceeds formal job description. Sportsmanship can be identified as not complaining about trivial matters. Courtesy is related to undertaking the obligation of cooperation with others; it also means to aware others in the organization about changes that affect their work life. Lastly civic virtue means to be aware of things happening in the organization (Noruzy et al, 2011). Moreover, it can be said that any leader empowerment behaviors are related with organizational citizenship through a number of mechanism. When leaders express confidence to the employees, it is will increase and that increase will result in motivation and efficiency through the organizational citizenship behavior (Organ et al. 2006) Social Loafing Social loafing is a phenomenon in which group membership degrades individual motivation and it occurs as the tendency of individuals in order to expend less effort while working collectively rather than A widely accepted explanation for productivity losses has been the social loafing phenomenon (George, 1992). Social loafing is based on the de-individuation that can occur when people work in groups as opposed to working alone. As Liden et al (2004) indicated in their research that researchers have grounded their study of social loafing in motivation theories, and

3 208 Himmet Karadal and Muhammet Saygın / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 ( 2013 ) have identified a wide variety of potential antecedents. Also it is expressed that although there are many antecedents, the term social loafing has the motivational background. Table 1. Potential Antecedents of Social Loafing Lack of identification of individual contributions to group Williams et al., 1981; Lack of challenge and uniqueness of individual contribution Harkins & Petty, 1982; Low intrinsic involvement Brickner, Harkins&Ostrom, 1986 Dividualistic orientation Wagner, 1995; Low group cohesiveness Karau & Williams, 1997 Lack of peer appraisals Druskat & Wolff, 1999 Source: R.C. Liden et al. / Journal of Management (2) The literature on social loafing field includes theoretical and empirical evidence that provide some insight into the nature and possible causes of social loafing. To conclude, the tendency to engage in social loafing is influenced by a large number of variables, highlighting a number of conditions under which social loafing would be more or less likely Group size Task difficulty Identifiability of individual performance (task visibility) Evaluation potential with an objective standard Dispensability of effort Coworker performance expectations Value of outcomes Personal Involvement (task meaningfulness and task importance) Group cohesiveness and Individual differences. In related scientific field, there have been a lot of studies dealing with social loafing, but it can be said that one of the first studies related with the loafing term in terms of group performance belongs to Ringelmann who is a French agricultural engineer (Kravitz & Martin, 1986). Furthermore, the term Ringelmann Effect is closely related with the loafing tendency because it describes the tendency for individual members of a group. That is, every group member can become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases. For example, imagine that a person can produce 100 units and the other person reaches the same quantity, but when these two workers are combined and work together, the result would be not 200 but 186. This situation is summarized as employees work together and the efficiency decreases (Forsyth, 2009). Assumptions and the hypotheses of the study are indicated below: H1: There is a relationship between social loafing and organizational citizenship H2: There is a relationship between social loafing and demographical features. H3: There is a relationship between organizational citizenship and demographical features. 3. Methodology The data were collected not only from principles and vice principals working for public schools but also specialists and managers working for the banks located in Aksaray. Various methods were used

4 Himmet Karadal and Muhammet Saygın / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 ( 2013 ) through the data collection that is firstly an interview was carried out and then by using a questionnaire data were collected. Also a deep research was carried out via digital libraries and databases. The data collection tool consisted of three parts. First part of the tool included the demographical questions determining employees' profile that is age, gender, position, salary, marital status and how long they are experiencing this proficiency. In the second section, 18 questions which were designed to measure organizational citizenship behavior and lastly in the third section, 10 questions which were designed to measure the social loafing tendency were used. Participants were instructed to indicate how characteristic each of the items was. The answers were placed with a rating scale system ranging from 1, "not at all characteristic," to 5, "very characteristic" and responses to these items were summed. The number of the participants included in this study was 158 (n = 122 male, n = 36 female). The data collection tool was designed in the light of a deep literature analysis. Organizational citizenship scale was adapted from the works of Organ et al (1988). Also, the scale developed by Podsakoff et al. (1990) has been taken into consideration. The social loafing scale was taken from George (1992). The data collection tool was reviewed via pre-test applications. Three specialists analyzed the data collection tool in terms of ambiguity, lexical design and syntactic structure. These specialists have the profession of Turkish linguistics and management. While collecting the data, participants were informed about the reasons for data collection and the required information about about their responses were given. The research deals with the organizational citizenship behavior and social loafing attitudes of managers of the agencies and institutes. Although it is an explanatory research, it compares the responses of different work groups and their level of perceptions about organizational citizenship behavior and social loafing tendency. 4. Findings The data for this study were collected from 193 participants, but 35 of these obtained data have been eliminated due to the incomplete information and missing values on the data collection tool. So, the study covers the responses of 158 participants who are still working for public services and private sector. In this findings section, demographical features of the participants are expressed. Demographical questions aim to determine participants' profile that is age, gender, position, salary, marital status and how long they are experienced in this proficiency. Table 2 shows the reliability of the scales used in data collection tool. According to the results s 577 and social loafing scale This means that social loafing scale is highly reliable and the citizenship scale can be accepted as reliable. Table 2. Reliability of the Scales Used in the Study Scale Measurement Range Items (n) Organizational Citizenship (1-5) 20, Social Loafing (1-5) 10, Table 3 indicates the demographical results of the participants of the study. These demographical features include gender, marital status, age, experience and profession.

5 210 Himmet Karadal and Muhammet Saygın / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 ( 2013 ) Table 3. Demographical Features of Participants Demographical Features Freq. % Position School Principle 88 55,7 Specialist 25 15,8 Bank Staff 17 10,8 Supervisor 15 9,5 Bank Manager 6 3,8 Vice Principle 4 2,5 Vice Manager 3 1,9 Age , , , , , ,1 Gender Female 36 22,8 Male ,2 Level of Education High School 7 4,4 Associate Degree (Short Cycle) 12 7, ,9 (Second Cycle) 8 5,1 Marital Status Single 39 24,7 Married ,2 Other 5 3,1 Experience (year) , , , ,6 (n):158 According to the data given below, most of the participants are male (122), and the number of female participants is (36). Age of the participants is mostly above 25. Participants whose ages are between 18 and 25 are only 9 people and it covers the 5,7% of the whole sample. In data collection tool, participants are asked to indicate their experience and the results show that the biggest group which has the 57,6% (91) is. It means that managers and school principles are the majority because they need to perform some required years to be promoted. The numbers of professions can also be seen in Table 3. There are 88 school principals who are responsible for administration of public schools, 25 specialists working in the banks and employees working for the banks with the title of supervisor and staff are 32. Also, the level of education can be summarized through the Table 3. Most of the participants have the 4-year education background and this means that almost all of the participants are qualified enough. This can be said that most of the participant have the ability of understanding the questions properly and giving reasonable answers as desired by the authors. The Figure 1 illustrates the education levels of the participants. Also, Table 4 shows the social loafing scale distributions of participants.

6 Himmet Karadal and Muhammet Saygın / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 ( 2013 ) Fig. 1. Education Level of Participants (1992) Social Loafing Scale, but in order to make the scale appropriate for the participants, in the light of the language and linguistics point of view, some alterations have been made. For example, salesperson expressions translated into Turkish with a different word meaning employee. In this table the original expressions are given. The numbers represent the Table 4. Social Loafing Tendency Specifications Social Loafing Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Defers responsibilities he or she should assume to other Puts forth less effort on the job when other salespeople Does not do his or her share of the work Spends less time helping customers if other salespeople Puts forth less effort than other members of his or her Avoids performing housekeeping tasks as much as Leaves work for the next shift which he or she should Is less likely to approach a customer if another Takes it easy if other salespeople are around to do the Defers customer service activities to other salespeople if (n): 158 Table 5 shows the distributions of organizational citizenship behavior. Items 1,2,3,4 are related with altruism which means a voluntary behavior including the cooperation of workers in relation to their tasks or problems. Most of the participants shared their ideas on strongly agree decision. Items 5,6, and 7 deal with sportsmanship dimension of citizenship which means not complaining trivial matters and third dimension is courtesy and it has the item number of 8,9,10 and 11 in the survey. Courtesy dimension of the organizational citizenship is about undertaking the obligation of cooperation with others. Courtesy in the scale is related with questions having negative meanings. The next dimension is conscientiousness and it deals with certain role behaviors which are exhibited by employees at a level that exceeds formal job description. Lastly, civic virtue dimension of citizenship means to be aware of things happening in the organization and most of the participants chose the strongly agree decision in data collection tool.

7 212 Himmet Karadal and Muhammet Saygın / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 ( 2013 ) (Noruzy et al, 2011). In Table 5, frequencies of the responses are given, so one can understand the consistency of the answers of participants Table 5. Organizational Citizenship Behavior Specifications Organizational Citizenship Dimensions Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Altruism Sportsmanship Courtesy Conscientiousness Civic Virtue Table 6 shows the paired samples t-test results of the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and social loafing tendency (SLT) scales. The differences between these two scales are presented in the table given below. So, one can infer that there is a meaningful difference between these scales that is endency. Table 6. Statistical Assessment Results of the OCB and SLT Scales (t-test) Scales Mean Std. Deviation t df Sig. n OCB- SLT 1,754 0,642 34,33 157, Table 7 shows the correlations between OCB and SLT scales. Correlation test has been carried out in order to see whether there is any statistical relationship involving dependence or not. So, correlation is this leads us the comment th s differently from their social loafing tendencies. As it is explained in literature view, a person has the citizenship behavior to be efficient in his workplace; on the other hand, a person has a social loafing tendency so as to ignore his responsibilities. This situation is summarized in Table 6 and Table 7. As a result, the hypothesis the statistical results of the scales. Table 7. Correlations between OCB and SLT Scales OCB SLT OCB Pearson Correlation 1,107 Sig. (2-tailed),182 SLT Pearson Correlation,107 1 Sig. (2-tailed),182

8 Himmet Karadal and Muhammet Saygın / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 ( 2013 ) In Table 8, statistical test results of the organizational citizenship behavior, social loafing tendency and demographical features of the participants are given. Table 8. Anova Statistical Test Results OCB/SLT and Demographical Features Gender Sum of df Mean Square F Sig. Between Groups,167 1,167 1,835,178 OCB Within Groups 14, ,091 Total 14, Between Groups 3, ,809 11,290,001 SLT Within Groups 52, ,337 Total 56, Education Between Groups,347 3,116 1,271,286 OCB Within Groups 14, ,091 Total 14, Between Groups 2,051 3,684 1,936,126 SLT Within Groups 54, ,353 Total 56, Age Between Groups,526 5,105 1,154,334 OCB Within Groups 13, ,091 Total 14, Between Groups 3,234 5,647 1,848,107 SLT Within Groups 53, ,350 Total 56, Marital Status Between Groups,865 2,432 4,964,008 OCB Within Groups 13, ,087 Total 14, Between Groups,212 2,106,292,747 SLT Within Groups 56, ,363 Total 56, Experience Between Groups,701 4,175 1,963,103 OCB Within Groups 13, ,089 Total 14, Between Groups 1,711 4,428 1,196,315 SLT Within Groups 54, ,358 Total 56, As it is shown in Table 8, organizational citizenship behavior and social loafing tendency scales are analyzed in the light of demographical features. So, gender has an effect on the difference of social loafing but it loafing tendency of female participants has the mean of 1,70 and male participants 2,07; on the other hand organizational citizenship behavior of male participants 3,72 and the female 3,80. The statistical means are shown in Table 9.

9 214 Himmet Karadal and Muhammet Saygın / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 99 ( 2013 ) Table 9. Gender Differences between OCB and SLT OCB SLT N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Minimum Maximum Female 36 3,8025,32704, ,67 4,44 Male 122 3,7250,29396, ,78 4,56 Total 158 3,7426,30250, ,67 4,56 Female 36 1,7028,56441, ,00 3,20 Male 122 2,0730,58550, ,00 4,10 Total 158 1,9886,59957, ,00 4,10 Moreover, marital status of the participants has effect on organization citizenship behavior that is the mean occurs as,008. The other demographi have any effect on citizenship behavior and social loafing. The hypothesis indicating the relationship between social loafing/organizational citizenship and demographical features is now seen to be approved because as it is given below, gender is important on social loafing and males and females differ from each other in terms of their approaches to loafing concept. 5. Discussion and Results In this study social loafing tendency and organizational citizenship behavior have been taken into consideration. In order to carry out the study, school principles and bank employees have been included in the research process. Through data collection tool which is a survey form consisting of 3 parts, the data have been collected from 158 participants. As it is seen in findings section, demographical features of participants are expressed. These demographical features include gender, marital status, age, experience and profession. It is seen that most of the participants are male (122), and the number of female participants is 36. Also, age of the participants is mostly above 25. Participants whose ages are between 18 and 25 are only 9 people and it reflects the 5,7% of the whole sample. In data collection tool, participants are asked to indicate their experience and the results show that the biggest group which has +, the relationship between social loafing tendency and organizational citizenship behavior is analyzed. According to the statistical assessment results, there is a meaningful difference between organizational citizenship and social loafing scale that is citizenship t related with their social loafing tendency. Therefore, par citizenship behavior occurs differently from their social loafing tendencies. Besides that relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors, social loafing tendency and demographical features of the participants are analyzed. Gender and marital status of the participants are seen to be related with citizenship and loafing. Especially gender of participants has an effect on social loafing tendency and marital status is a key element to differentiate organizational citizenship behavior. The o t have any effect on citizenship and loafing. As a result, organizational citizenship concept is a key element of success and motivation. Employees should have this attitude in order to be efficient in their workplaces; on the other hand, social loafing is the underlying reason of inefficiency. Further studies are needed to analyze these results in a more detailed way. This study deals with the organizational citizenship behavior and social loafing tendency of principals, managers, bank employees and specialists in a regional point of view. This study covers a different view of public and private institutions. For broader consequences and implications, broader samples should be included to the research. This study presents the descriptive features for the related literature itself.

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